Page 70 of Lustling

Then the dream snaps. I jolt upright in bed, breath tearing from me, body still aching with the aftertaste of worship. The images fade, but the heat lingers, the shame a living thing in mygut. For a moment I sit there, hands curled, as if I might hold the dream close enough to keep it from vanishing entirely.

I am not alone. Lillien is beside me—still naked from whatever Deimos and her did, propped against the headboard, legs tucked beneath her. The bedside lamp paints small, warm shadows across her face. She isn’t looking at me. She’s reading. The file we brought back from Hell lies heavy in her hands.

My mouth goes dry and I say nothing, because the dream still hangs between us like a scent I can’t shake. I can feel her hands, her lips.

And worse—some selfish, awful part of me wants it back.

She looks up only long enough to speak, voice casual as if the world wasn’t rearranging itself inside me. “Did you enjoy your dream?”

Guilt slices through me so sharp I can barely swallow. “Were you in it?” I ask, though I already suspect the answer.

She turns a page without meeting my eyes. “No,” she says.

Relief nearly knocks the breath from me, but it is brief and brittle. She looks up then, and there’s a tilt to her mouth that makes me uneasy. “But I know what you were dreaming about,” she says, tone unreadable. “I don’t know how. I just do.”

I say nothing. How could I explain that sometimes the bone-deep ache answers before the mind does? Shame colors every inch of me. I feel small and exposed and foolish.

She closes the file, the motion quiet but deliberate, and shifts the subject, as if that will stitch the moment into ordinary. “So, my parents promised me to Zepharion… and then changed their minds?”

I breathe out slowly, forcing steadiness into my voice as I push myself up against the headboard. “Basically, yeah,” I murmur. “I guess your father owed him a debt. You were promised as his bride, but they couldn’t go through with it. They hid you with a human family instead.”

Her fingers tighten on the edges of the file; the paper creases but she doesn’t flinch. “They left me with strangers,” she says, and the calm in her voice is a fragile thing with a crack.

Then she looks at me, and I see it—tears brimming at the rims of her eyes, lighting on lashes like dew that could fall at any second. She does not cry aloud. She has never cried in front of us. This is something else: grief folding in on itself, the slow burn of a life discovered to be a lie.

I move without thinking. I reach. I pull her into me. Her frame fits against my chest, small and warm, and she buries her face there. Her shoulders shudder; it is not a sob, not quite, but the tremor is honest and it makes something in me unclench.

I hold her. We lie back against pillows, and her breathing evens as the minutes bleed out. Her fingers curl against my chest, a soft anchor. The shame recedes a fraction; tenderness fills the hollows it left.

When she is steady, when the quiet is not only absence but peace, I speak because the words have been living in the dark of me for a long time. Soft, reverent, because anything louder would break the hold we have. “I loved a demon once.”

She stills, the whisper of paper the only sound between us.

“That’s why you fell?” she asks, and the question is careful, curious.

I nod and stare at the ceiling as if the plaster can hold my confession. “She wasn’t supposed to be in my world. But she was beautiful. Sharp. She knew how to listen. How to twist words into something… intimate.” The memory tastes like lead. “I thought it was real. I thought she loved me.”

A bitter laugh escapes me, thin and useless in the hush. “But she didn’t. She never did. She just wanted to see if she could break an angel.”

We sit with that, the silence heavy and honest and full of small, cutting things. Lillien props herself up just enough to lookat me; her dark gaze is steady, and there’s a blade in it I did not expect.

“Is that why you hate me?” The words land like a stone.

My chest tightens. She believes I hate her. Of course she does. Who wouldn’t? The thought of it lances me.

I don’t pull away. I cup her cheek, thumb brushing over the skin there, feeling the warmth, the realness. She leans into the touch and something feral and tender twists itself inside me. She is vulnerable in a way the others may never see, and she’s here pressing her small weight into me. That choice alters things.

“I don’t hate you,” I murmur, and the softness in my voice surprises me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have offered to hand you over. I don’t want you to leave.” My fingers tighten against her jaw without meaning to. “I just… I don’t like to fight.”

She studies me, the light catching in her dark eyes. Then, with a small tilt that cuts me open in the best way, she asks, “Not even for me?”

The question lands raw and perfect. I let out a quiet laugh, the sound small and helpless, then offer her what I can—a smile that is almost a surrender and a whisper that is all truth. “Only for you.”

We close the distance without ceremony. I kiss her slow and deep, the way one might try to seal a fragile truce. She answers me without hesitation, lips parting, fingers knotting against my chest as if to claim the place she has been given. When I pull back she lingers, breath soft and eyes dark with something dangerous and delicious.

A smirk ghosts her mouth. “I’m going to have you on your knees for me at some point,” she promises, equal parts dare and declaration.

I huff a laugh, shaking my head even as warmth climbs my neck. “I don’t doubt it, Temptress.”